WINE KNOWLEDGE:
Don't know where to start with wine? In this two-part 'primer', Lionel Lau starts with some dos for beginners nearly every week someone asks me "How should I begin if I want to learn about wine?", so I've put together a simple wine primer, a set of dos and don'ts for the budding wine lover. We start with the Do's:
* Do start with simple and inexpensive wines, and work your way up to powerhouse bottles. There's no point in opening an expensive and complex Château Lafite-Rothschild Bordeaux as your first red wine experience.
* Do try a variety of wines. Trying everything is the only way to build your sensory memory and discover your own tastes. You'll never make any progress with wine if you stick to the same Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, no matter how much you like them.
* Do go with your instincts. There is no point in suffering through a wine that you really don't like just because you have read that it's supposed to be good. I've tasted plenty of expensive bottles that were not to my liking, and there are certain varietals that I've simply never warmed up to. Wine, like art, is subjective. As you become more experienced, your opinions will become more informed, but meanwhile, don't hesitate to voice an opinion about a wine that you taste.
* Do realize that the most important characteristic of a good wine is balance. A wine's flavor can have many different elements - fruit, tannin, spice, oak, etc. The best wines have all these things in a complex harmony, and no one flavor overshadows the others. You want your wine to be like a smooth ensemble, not an assemblage of discordant divas, each vying for attention.
|
